News

Updates and Insights from the Community Foundation

Featured Posts

  • 2023-2024 Annual Report

    Posted on November 08, 2024

    2023-2024 Annual Report
    In a pivotal year, Grand Rapids Community Foundation awarded $16,078,689 in grants to nonprofit partners and scholarships to students. The organization's total assets were stewarded to $448,331,707. Other results and stories from partners are highlighted [...]
Insights

  • Posted on July 27, 2010

    So where does the money come from?
    We have two floors in the "world corporate headquarters" of the Grand Rapids Community Foundation. The first floor houses the grantmaking/community leadership team who are hard-working, passionate, resourceful and driven! There is a quiet yet [...]

  • Posted on July 14, 2010

    GRCF - Old School or Hip Happenin'?
    This is Leadership! You will be reading and hearing a great deal more about the Foundation's leadership efforts in the coming months and I hope you enjoy reading the stories and examples. For months, we [...]

  • Posted on July 01, 2010

    Leadership! The Basics!!!
    In the late 1990s, a group of committed community foundation leaders had a dream for the future of the field and set a course to make that dream a reality. The Committee on Community Foundations [...]

  • Posted on June 02, 2010

    Casey Wondergem - GR's strongest supporter!
    About 25 years ago I met Casey Wondergem prior to being hired to lead the Grand Rapids Community Foundation and learned quickly that he really wrote the book on how "this community works!" He was [...]

  • Posted on May 12, 2010

    Are nonprofits less than . . . ??
    It happened again! Addressing a large group of nonprofit, foundation, and national organization leaders recently, a business leader was trying to convey generally a positive message about how his company has taken the leap to [...]

  • Posted on April 01, 2010

    Is there ever a good day to be homeless?
    I'm sure it was the warm sunny weather or a pre-April Fool's Day idea of a joke but a tweet on Twitter caught my attention yesterday. Actually it wasn't from someone I know or follow [...]

  • Posted on March 15, 2010

    What is this thing called Leadership?
    Here's a "sneak preview" of my article in our newsletter Current "hitting stands" this week:I often muse that writing about what Grand Rapids Community Foundation does would be easier if we only funded solutions for [...]

  • Posted on February 24, 2010

    Rough waters ---> great leadership!
    I've been struggling with a variety of situations and issues relating to community politics and GRCF strategies. How to convey this in this blog presents a challenge. The original intent behind this blog initiated in [...]

  • Posted on February 08, 2010

    What's Your Art? Go to whatsyourartgr.com!
    Last April, I called together the CEOs from our area's larger arts and cultural organizations along with our colleagues from the Frey and Steelcase Foundations to discuss the impact of the recession and how they [...]

  • Posted on January 11, 2010

    Social networks and philanthropy
    For the past 18 months, I have been an active participant on Twitter and Facebook. Some view this as "who cares what you had for dinner" or "what's the big deal about tracking every moment [...]